Now that the Christmas season is officially underway, our house is usually filled with Christmas music. Christmas music might be my favorite part of the holiday. I love the carols, the hymns, the secular songs (most of them anyway, well probably just the older ones). I love to sing them – and I can’t really anymore. Maybe it’s age. Maybe it’s from not taking care of my voice properly. For whatever reason, for several years now, my voice has been declining. Nothing seems to be in my vocal range anymore. I croak my way through whatever I attempt to sing. I start coughing. It makes me sad. I do make a noise, and in my heart and head it is joyful, although it may not sound it.
One of the things I find most amazing about us humans is our ability to sing. I know that other animals make noises that approximate singing – birds, whales, howler monkeys, but none of it approaches what we humans can do. The human voice in song is miraculous, a gift God gave us to use to express ourselves in wonderful ways. I’ve always loved to sing. I grew up in a family that sang together all the time. We didn’t have a radio in our car until I was a teenager. Whenever we traveled, we sang, and we sang well. I had a beautiful clear soprano voice when I was child. When we were little, my younger brother, Steve (he was called Stevie back then and I was Danny), used to beg me to sing to him at bedtime. Sometimes I didn’t want to and he would cry and my parents would come in and tell me that I had sing to him. So I would make up sad songs about lost kittens and dying puppies and Stevie would end up crying himself to sleep anyway.
When I was ten we moved to Ohio where we attended church at the Kent-Ravenna Ward, a much larger congregation than the little West Shore Branch we attended in Pennsylvania, and our new ward had a choir. My family joined right away. I loved singing in the choir. From then on, in every placed we lived, I sang in the choir. Sometimes I was asked to sing solos. I sang White Christmas as a solo when I was in 5th grade at my elementary school’s Christmas concert. My sister Hollie and I won a church talent show for singing a duet. My voice changed around age fourteen and I went from singing soprano to baritone. When I was sixteen, I took voice lessons for a while from Joyce Stringham, a member of our ward in Naperville, who once sang in the Tabernacle Choir. Later, in California after my mission, I took voice lessons again from Maryann Mendenhall. I became the choir director in our ward in Sylmar, California, almost as soon as I arrived there after my mission. I’ve been the chorister or choir director or both at some point in every congregation I’ve attended since then.
My own family can sing too. We sang all the time when our children were growing up. We still sing together. Stacey and all of my children have fine singing voices. But I don’t anymore. As I was croaking my way through Christmas carols last week, I pondered longingly on the time when this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality, when my spirit and body shall be reunited again in its perfect form ( not that I was longing for death or anything like that, just having a restored and perfected body). Then I will sing again with a perfect voice again and it will be joyful.
November left us with a taste of the winter that is to come. On Monday we awoke to a dusting of snow, too little to be pretty, but enough to make things white-ish. That morning, as I was tending my plants and tidying the house, I put on the Christmas albums that I traditionally begin the festive season with – the Celtic Christmas albums I - IV. It made me so happy to hear them as I worked. All the happy associations of the season came flooding out. I had to remind myself that it was still November and I had to control the urge to pull out all the boxes and start decorating. We started turning on the outdoor Christmas lights on November 25th, but we usually don’t do indoor decorations until December has arrived.
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| Monday's snow. |
The Shilligs, however, did begin decorating, December or not. We went over after dinner that evening and helped get their Christmas tree out of storage. They have a big artificial tree that they store in the rafters of their garage with all its lights already in place. We brought it in and set in it in its traditional spot in the corner of their living room. They’ve had that tree for over thirty years and it’s showing signs of its age, but it is beautiful with its thousands of lights.
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| Getting the Shillig's tree down. |
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| Setting up the Shillig's tree. |
It snowed during the night on Monday and on Tuesday morning things were a little whiter – and colder. The temperature never rose above 24°. I fired up the wood stove and kept it going all day and into the night. That afternoon, when I went to do the chores, the ice on the rain barrel down at the barn was finally thick enough that I couldn’t break through it. I had to go back to the house and carry water down for the chickens.
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| Tuesday's snow. |
It snowed off and on through the day on Tuesday. By Wednesday morning, we had about two inches on the ground. Before dawn, I heard the snow plow go by down on route 49. It seemed unnecessary to me. There wasn’t much of anything on the road. I think it was spreading cinders. It was 16° when I went out to fill the bird feeders at dawn. There was a lovely sunrise. I did the chores and gave the chickens extra scratch and feed since I was going away for the day and wouldn’t be back before dark.
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| Wednesday morning. |
We left at 10:30 that morning and drove down to Duncannon to gather with family for the interment of my Aunt Esther Rathfon. It’s about a three hour drive south. Once we got past Wellsboro, there wasn’t any snow on the ground. We arrived at the cemetery just before 2:00. There were a few people already there, but as I stood there others arrived – my cousins and their families. I hadn’t seen some of them for many years and we commented to each other how we’ve all grown old. The service, conducted by my cousin Linda and her husband Guy, was brief and heartfelt. Afterward, we lingered for a few minutes to talk and take some photos, but it was cold and windy and no one stayed long. We loaded back into the car and drove north again. On the way back, we stopped in Wellsboro to do some shopping and arrived home at 7:00. After that brief encounter with my cousins, I am sorry that we don’t see each other more often and that the thing that brought us together was death. We need to remedy that.
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| My Rathfon kin: Rob, Linda, Lori, Suzanne, Hannah, Preston. |
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| At Esther's service. |
I spent most of Thursday running errands. I drove up to Wellsville in the morning. I spent time at the chapel preparing and printing my branch Christmas letter. After that, I went to Runnings and bought chicken feed and other items. On my way back, I stopped at Bob and Nancy Jones’s to pick up some potato sacks that they gave me. I had a nice chat with Bob. Then I came home and unloaded it all. By then the day had warmed into the 40s and most of the snow disappeared. I took a walk around the property noting the things I will do when spring comes. Stacey said she saw a fox cross the front yard a few mornings before and I saw evidence of its visit in the patches of remaining snow. It looks like it went from across the road past the beaver pond, through part of the big garden, across our front yard, and then across the Rapley Road. I didn’t see any tracks near the barn and that’s good. I don’t want a fox interested in my chickens.
That afternoon when I did the chores, I took advantage of the day’s warmth – by warmth I mean it was 44° – and retired the rain barrel. It had about ten inches of ice on top. I had to smash the ice and empty it a bucket at time until I could push it over and dump out all the water and ice. Then I turned it upside down and set it next to the fence. So, no more rain barrel for a long time. That’s a seasonal milestone I don’t like to cross. Now I’ll be carrying water to the barn every day for the next four months or more.
Friday, the first of December, was a dreary day. It was just warm enough for it to rain instead of snow, but the rain was cold, just this side of ice. I stayed indoors all day and only went out to do chores. Because we went down to Thayn’s house for Thanksgiving, we didn’t get to feed our missionaries last week. So on Friday we had them come to a belated Thanksgiving dinner. We had all the good food – turkey, dressing, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, sweet potato casserole, green bean casserole, zesty carrots, rolls, and for dessert, a pumpkin roll.
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| Second Thanksgiving with the missionaries. |
Saturday was overcast and rainy most of the day. It was one of those deceptively springlike days, the kind that teases you with a bit of mild weather just before the bad stuff hits. Stacey and I spent most of the day running errands. That evening we decorated the inside of the house. That is a big deal. It involves bringing in box after box from the woodshed, unloading the decorations in them, taking down the items that we keep up the rest of year, loading those into the boxes that then go back out to the woodshed until after Christmas. Then we put up the garlands, the nativities, and all the festive knickknacks. They go in their customary places, everything just so. We also moved plants and furniture to ready the place where the Christmas tree will go. We’d planned to get our tree on the 8th, but now that the other decorations are up, that empty spot in the bay window needs to be filled. So we are going tomorrow for Family Home Evening and get the tree.
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| One of our Nativities. |
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| Some of our Christmas knickknacks. |
Today was another almost warm, rainy day, like yesterday. The rain has washed away the last vestiges of snow, but things won’t stay that way for long. We have a chance for snow tomorrow and on Tuesday. Today was Fast Sunday. Our church meetings were good. Lunch is almost ready. We are still eating leftovers from Friday’s turkey dinner and that is fine with me. Miriam and Hannah joined a community choir and today at 3:00 is the first of several Christmas concerts they will sing in. Stacey, Julie, and I are going to hear them. I’m glad they are singing, making a joyful noise. Tonight is the First Presidency Christmas Devotional. I always look forward to that. Such good beginnings to the Christmas season!
